Kachru's Model of World Englishes: Analysing Asian performance

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the English language has spread all over the world, focusing on Kachru's well-known model Three Circles of English (1992), including its criticism. The research starts from the aesthetical and phonological changes English has undergone from its beginnings, leading to its expansion around the globe. The two main diasporas will be analysed as the cause of its spread. From general to specific, the three circles will be described, finally focusing on the Expanding Circle as it is the most variable in terms of speakers at present. Some criticism of Kachru's model will also be revised. The chosen countries as the representative of this Expanding Circle are China, Japan and Korea. As the English speakers in those countries are the non-native ones, the main goal is to seek similarities between their languages and English. This is done in order to provide an account of the difficulties that Chinese, Japanese and Korean may encounter when trying to master English. These difficulties include the alphabet, sentence word order and some oral features. Contrarily to what can be expected, reports reveal that no significant difference in English proficiency level is shown between the speakers in these countries and those who use the Latin alphabet or are geographically closer to England. Finally, conclusions and ideas for further research are mentioned, together with the restrictions that this research has